Main dishes

Saffron chicken with zucchini

15 min Cook
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Saffron chicken with zucchini

Transform a weeknight dinner into something extraordinary with this simple yet elegant plate of vegan saffron chicken and tender zucchini. with its creamy texture, it feels comforting without being heavy. Quick to prepare yet deeply flavorful, this dish brings restaurant-quality presentation straight to your home table with minimal effort.

Did you know?

Saffron is famously more expensive by weight than gold. This high cost comes down to how it is harvested: each flower produces only three tiny red threads (stigmas), and they must all be hand-picked at dawn before the flower withering in the sun. It takes about 75,000 to 150,000 flowers to produce just a single pound of dry saffron. That requires harvesting an area roughly the size of a football field entirely by hand!

Long before it became a prized culinary ingredient in dishes like paella and risotto, ancient civilizations used saffron as a textile dye, a perfume, and a traditional medicine. Even Cleopatra reportedly used it in her baths to give her skin a golden glow.

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Saffron chicken with zucchini

Saffron chicken with zucchini

corinthian
Saffron chicken with zucchini is a beloved summer Italian classic. With its velvety cream and comforting flavor, it's easy and quick to prepare and it always impresses. With a handful ingredients, this is how to fix supper in an elegant and satisfying fashion at once. In this plant-based version, we used vegan chicken pieces and soy cream. You can sub with real chicken strips and dairy cream.
prep time
5 min
cooking time
15 min
servings
2
total time
20 minutes

Equipment

  • Knife

  • Slicing board

  • Casserole

  • Wooden spoon

Ingredients

  • 2 large zucchini

  • 1/2 onion

  • 200 g vegan chicken pieces/shreds

  • 200 ml soy cream

  • 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

  • Salt and pepper, to taste

  • 4 g saffron

  • 1/2 vegetable cube

  • Fresh parsley, to garnish

Instructions

1

Prep the ingredients

Peel and halve the onion, then slice it thinly. Rinse well the zucchini, chop off the ends and discard them. Slice both zucchini into rounds and then halve them. Rinse the parsley and mince it thinly with a knife.
2

Cook the zucchini

Heat the olive oil in a casserole over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for a couple of minutes, until it softens. Add the zucchini and stir to coat them well with the oil, then cover with a lid and turn the heat to low. Cook for 5 minutes, until the zucchini soften a bit.
3

Add the chicken

Add the chicken pieces to the casserole and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring from time to time. Season with salt and pepper.
4

Make the creamy sauce

Add the soy cream, crumble half a vegetable stock cube and add it to the cream, then add the saffron. Stir gently until the sauce becomes a golden color, then cook for a few more minutes, until the sauce becomes of the creamy consistency you would like.
5

Garmish and Serve

Take off the heat, transfer to the serving plates, and sprinkle with fresh parsley before serving. Buon appetito!
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